Do you think things are different in cultures where women present differently socially, less 'feminine'? Cultures that are not steeped in western ideas of what women should look like
There was some sort of social anthropology stud done, maybe last year? that suggested that in societies where men and women have more similar lives, they tend to have more differences in cultural accoutrements of gender, like clothing.
Studies like that IMO are more suggestive than clearly evidential, but it's an interesting thought. In most cultures, especially historically, men and women simply have had very different lives, even if they tend to dress the same and look very similar. The demands of biology mean quite different social roles, and I think that must translate into a strong sense of what is masculine and feminine, even without differences in dress and such.
But given that in our society men and women can have very similar roles, mainly due to the ability to control pregnancy, I do wonder if that skews our sense of what is masculine and feminine, and tends to make it sexual in a different way. Not sexual as in tied to reproduction (which has historically always simply been a given) but instead sexual as a kind of transaction, or focused on sexual arousal and satisfaction.